To-Do lists are the hardest thing in the world to get right. A lot of services have tried to make really simple applications to manage your to-do list. Google has one built into GMail, and TaDaList has been around for a long time.

Orchestra for the web and iOS wants you to use your phone to not only create tasks, but share them with people you might need help from to complete them.

The app has the best on-boarding experience I’ve ever seen. The design is beautiful and walks you through each major feature Orchestra’s To-Do app has. I think the app is the best way to use Orchestra.

Add a Task

Adding a task in Orchestra is simple, done by either typing it in, or holding the red task button and speaking into your device. The voice transcriptions are perfect in my experience so far, so I’ve been going that route since I started using Orchestra.

You can assign a task to yourself or someone else via email address or username if they’re also using the app. It will notify them via push notifications when the task is sent. This is great for real-time work or family interaction.

Task Activity

Once you’ve set up a task, you can bring anyone into it at anytime. Through “activity”, you can see conversations happening around a task, as well as history log of things that were changed with the task. For example, if I changed the task due date to next week, that would show in the activity log, and alert the person it was assigned to.

The list views in Orchestra are really helpful as well, especially if you have a long to-do list like I do. You can star items to make them important, as well as sort by assigned tasks that are currently unread.

Web view

Using Orchestra on the web is simple, too, but it doesn’t give you that full focus when you have it up in a separate tab. The site displays your tasks and information in a cascading view, and you don’t get the same notifications that you do from the app.

I like having a to-do list outside of my email and existing desktop because I can focus on it clearly. Orchestra might just be the app to get you through all of your tasks as well.